Quantitative-EEG

CNS Response ranked #21 Holder of Pervasive Neurotech Intellectual Property*

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CNS

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CNS Response is a cloud-based out­comes-shar­ing plat­form for EEG data. The pur­pose of the plat­form, named PEER (Psy­chi­atric EEG Eval­u­a­tion Reg­istry) is to improve treat­ment deci­sions for psy­chi­atric con­di­tions by ref­er­enc­ing the thou­sands of out­comes from pre­vi­ous tri­al instances. [Read more…] about CNS Response ranked #21 Hold­er of Per­va­sive Neu­rotech Intel­lec­tu­al Property*

Why Being Young for Grade Increases Odds of ADHD Diagnosis and Stimulant Medication

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ADHD is the most com­mon­ly diag­nosed neu­robe­hav­ioral dis­or­der in chil­dren and sub­stan­tial evi­dence indi­cates that bio­log­i­cal fac­tors play an impor­tant role in its devel­op­ment. For exam­ple, although the exact mech­a­nism by which genet­ic fac­tors con­vey increased risk for ADHD remains unclear, the impor­tance of genet­ic trans­mis­sion has been doc­u­ment­ed in a num­ber of pub­lished studies.

Even though bio­log­i­cal fac­tors are wide­ly regard­ed as impor­tant in the devel­op­ment of ADHD, no med­ical or bio­log­i­cal test is rec­om­mend­ed for rou­tine use when diag­nos­ing ADHD. Instead, [Read more…] about Why Being Young for Grade Increas­es Odds of ADHD Diag­no­sis and Stim­u­lant Medication

Male clin­i­cians may be misdiag­nosing 39% of ADHD-diagnosed boys

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39% We had sev­er­al read­ers high­light this strik­ing sta­tis­tic from yes­ter­day’s blog post, Is ADHD over­diag­nosed? Find­ings from a new study in Germany

This is but anoth­er exam­ple on the grow­ing need to base behavioral/ men­tal health pre­ven­tion, diag­nos­tic and treat­ment not on symp­toms alone, but to mea­sure and incor­po­rate objec­tive mark­ers of brain func­tion, as dis­cussed in our pre­vi­ous arti­cle Neurofeedback/ Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG for ADHD diag­no­sis and in Thomas Insel’s blog post on big data.

Neurofeedback/ Quantitative EEG for ADHD diagnosis

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Like all psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, ADHD is diag­nosed based on the pres­ence of par­tic­u­lar behav­ioral symp­toms that are judged to cause sig­nif­i­cant impair­ment in an indi­vid­u­al’s func­tion­ing, and not on the results of a spe­cif­ic test. In fact, recent­ly pub­lished ADHD eval­u­a­tion guide­lines from the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics (AAP) explic­it­ly state that no par­tic­u­lar diag­nos­tic test should be rou­tine­ly used when eval­u­at­ing a child for ADHD.

While most ADHD experts would agree that no sin­gle test could or should be used in iso­la­tion to diag­nose ADHD, there are sev­er­al impor­tant rea­sons why the avail­abil­i­ty of an accu­rate objec­tive test would be useful.

First, many chil­dren do not receive a care­ful and com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment for ADHD but are instead diag­nosed with based on eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures that are far from optimal.

Sec­ond, although AAP guide­lines indi­cate that spe­cif­ic diag­nos­tic tests should not be rou­tine­ly used, many par­ents are con­cerned about the lack of objec­tive pro­ce­dures in their child’s eval­u­a­tion. In fact, many fam­i­lies do not pur­sue treat­ment for ADHD because the the absence of objec­tive eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures leads them to ques­tion the diag­no­sis. You can read a review of an inter­est­ing study on this issue at www.helpforadd.com/2006/january.htm

For these rea­sons an accu­rate and objec­tive diag­nos­tic test for ADHD could be of val­ue in many clin­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. Two impor­tant con­di­tions would have to be met for such a test to be useful.

First, it would have to be high­ly sen­si­tive to [Read more…] about Neurofeedback/ Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG for ADHD diagnosis